Category Archives: Afghan War Logs

The prospect of a judicial review into previously covered-up civilian shootings in Afghanistan has opened up after human rights campaigners launched an attempt to take the Ministry of Defence to court.

This follows the disclosure in the Guardian that a series of unusual civilian shootings involving two British army units, are documented in last week’s WikiLeaks publication of thousands of leaked US military files.

A formal letter was sent to the defence secretary, Liam Fox, at the weekend by a lawyer, Phil Shiner, on behalf of the peace campaigner Maya Evans. Shiner said: “I am sure we will be able to get this into court.”

The campaigners say the killings “require to be investigated as suspected war crimes” under the legislation that set up the international criminal court. They call on the MoD to conduct a proper investigation of the allegations.

Since the details of civilian shootings recorded in the war logs were revealed, MoD officials have not disputed their general accuracy, but ministers have failed to give any explanation, or order any public investigation.

Shiner told Fox the documents reproduced in the Guardian “Identify … the killing of at least 26 civilians and the wounding of a further 20 by British forces”.

This is a relatively small fraction of the hundreds of civilian killings admitted to by US forces in the course of filing war logs which were later leaked. Most British units barely figure in the civilian casualty reports collected in the field by US intelligence.

Disgustingly, our troops have murdered far more civilians than any other country over there. Of course our troop numbers far exceed any of the other nations as well.